Re: The QPL licence
On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 12:08:54AM +0200, martin f krafft wrote:
> I am working on it. In the mean time, let me present the authors
> argument for the QPL. He is basically afraid of a fork, which he
> argues is easier than cooperation. He's probably right. He wants
> there to be one libcwd, and only one libcwd, and no "competition"
> from projects building up on years of his work.
>
> I can completely understand this line of reasoning, and I find it
> hard to argue against that. If you have convincing arguments, share
> them with me (or just post them here, I sent the thread link to the
> author).
Freedom to fork is completely fundamental to free software; this is
integral to DFSG#3. Allowing other authors to "compete" using your
source is also fundamental to free software.
I don't quite understand this, though: the QPL doesn't prevent forking. If
it did, there would probably be a much more serious DFSG-freeness problem.
> You and I, we agree that the QPL should go away and be replaced by
> a truly free licence. However, unless we find a licence that
> accomodates DFSG-freeness and the author's wish for legal protection
> against forks, it's going to be hard.
These goals are completely incompatible.
> I have proposed to him to consider creating a license of his own,
> which would basically allow everything except the incoporation of
> the code into another project with the same goals as libcwd. We'll
> see what comes.
This would be DFSG-unfree.
--
Glenn Maynard
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